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Happy B-Day, Mickey Rourke

Philip Andre “Mickey” Rourke, Jr. (born September 16, 1952) is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films. During the 1980s, Rourke starred in “Diner”, “”Rumble Fish, and the erotic drama “9½ Weeks”, and received critical praise for his work in “Barfly” and “Angel Heart”. In 1991, Rourke, who had trained as a boxer in his early years, left acting and became a professional boxer for a period. In 2005, Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in “Sin City”, for which he won awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Irish Film and Television Awards and the Online Film Critics Society. In the 2008 film “The Wrestler”, Rourke portrayed a past-his-prime wrestler, and received a 2009 Golden Globe award, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.

In 2010, he appeared in “Iron Man 2” and “The Expendables”. Rourke is an excellent actor, by the way. And very handsome when young, but time and botched plastic surgeries do not forgive anyone…

Two of my favorites movies from the 80’s are “Angel Heart”, directed by Alan Parker, and “Rumble Fish”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Both were starred by Mickey Rourke.

“Rumble Fish” is based on the novel “Rumble Fish” by S.E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay. The film centers on the relationship between Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), a revered former gang leader wishing to live a more peaceful life, and his younger brother, Rusty James (Matt Dillon), a teenaged hoodlum who aspires to become as feared as Motorcycle Boy. The film’s marketing tagline was, “Rusty James can’t live up to his brother’s reputation. His brother can’t live it down”.

Coppola wrote the screenplay for the film with Hinton on his days off from shooting “The Outsiders”. He made the films back-to-back, retaining much of the same cast and crew. The film is notable, for its avant-garde style, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film, using the spherical cinematographic process with allusions to French New Wave cinema and German Expressionism. Rumble Fish features an experimental score by Stewart Copeland, drummer of the musical group The Police who used a Musync, a new device at the time.

“Angel Heart” is a 1987 American mystery horror film written and directed by Alan Parker, and starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet. The film is adapted from the novel “Falling Angel” by William Hjortsberg, and is generally faithful to the novel with the exceptions being the introduction of a child of Epiphany Proudfoot conceived at a voodoo ceremony by “a devil”, and that the novel never leaves New York City, whereas much of the action of the film occurs in New Orleans. A highly atmospheric film, Angel Heart combines elements of film noir, hard-boiled detective stories and horror.

The movie opens in New York City, in January 1955. Harry Angel (Rourke), a downtrodden but competent private investigator, is contacted by an attorney named Herman Winesap (Dann Florek) and instructed to meet a client named Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) in a Harlem church. Cyphre, an elegant, mysterious man, tells Angel about a once-popular big band crooner named Johnny Favorite who was drafted during World War II and suffered severe neurological trauma in action. Favorite’s incapacitation disrupted a contract with Cyphre regarding unknown collateral, and Cyphre believes that the hospital has falsified records, preventing the contract from being fulfilled. He hires Angel to discover the truth, and in the process, locate Favorite.